After spending 10 days in Israel this summer - mostly in J'lem - Mrs CO FF and I decided that our (us + 2 teenagers) next family trip to Israel will deliberately skip J'lem. (OK, except maybe for a shabbat to daven with our favorite Masorti kehillot) Since neither of us have been to Eilat, or spent any serious time in the Negev, the plan is to either start in the north and work our way to Eilat, or start in Eilat and work our way to the north.

My preference would be to fly trans-Atlantic on AA metal, so I can use my Executive Platinum SWUs to upgrade everyone to J on the longhaul leg. Then, if I connect to LY, I can earn AA RDMs on the LY leg, even if it doesn't have an AA codeshare b/c of the ongoing dispute re the Israeli civil aviation authority.

Is there anyplace in Europe where I can get a nonstop flight to Eilat? If not, how difficult is the domestic connection @ Ben-Gurion?

(And, while I'm sure I don't need to say it, if you have any better ideas, I'd love to hear them!)

There are charter flights from Helsinki, Moscow, Tallin, S Peterberg, Paris and Bacu. These flights are all to Ovda which is one hour away from eilat.
There are many many flights that go all the way to Eilat. They are operated by Arkia or Israir. You can fly from TLV just change to terminal 1.
Many other flights go from Sde Dov airport which is actually in Tel Aviv.

I would do a third option. Come to Israel, and in the middle of your trip go for a few days to Eilat.

The only "real" European airline that flies to Ovda (about 30 minutes from Eilat) is Aeroflot from SVO. LY has a flight from CDG to Ovda via TLV on Sundays.

Connection in TLV is non-existing ... you clear immigration and customs, take your bags with you, board a shuttle bus to terminal 1 and check-in to your next flight on Israir or Arkia.

You didnt specified when this trip will happen..., If we are talking about 2 months and above, you will probably have a connection via EL-AL that suppose to start on the 01/01/10 direct flights to Eilat from TLV.

Oops! This is December 2010-January 2011 (kids' school vacation). Trying to line my options up early to be ready to pounce on AA flights that I can upgrade @ time of booking...

Once again I was fooled into thinking that this was LY related. Please put an OT in the subject line next time.

Excuse me while I edit my OP.

It's sounds terrible the way you were sadly fooled!

At least something is being discussed here, this forum is quite enough.

Were you the one who made sure that the "kosher near ben gurion" thread was moved away?

I agree here. . . why should "kosher near ben gurion" be moved away? There is a far better chance of getting an answer to a question like that here in the LY forum than anywhere else on FT.

Oh come on, the OP could have put an OT but it's not such a big deal!

I still don't understand how asking about flight options to one of the major travel destinations in Israel is unrelated to LY. Or is it that I didn't specifically say "flight on LY" -- and if so, you purists are as bad as the Rabbanut over nonsense.